Alspaugh, Louise

ORAL HISTORY OF LOUISE ALSPAUGH
Interviewed by Jim Kolb
September 17, 2002
Mr. Kolb: Louise, why don’t we start out by letting you tell us when and why you and your family came to Oak Ridge.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Okay, we came in 1943. My husband was called over here by Union Carbide. He was working with Duke Power Company in Taylorsville, but he was called over here, so that’s the reason we came. It was during the war.
Mr. Kolb: He was called.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, they wrote him a letter and asked him to come.
Mr. Kolb: And his work was what?
Mrs. Alspaugh: He was in the Electrical Department.
Mr. Kolb: So they must have needed electrical type people.
Mrs. Alspaugh: They evidently did. Duke Power did not want to release him, but they did finally.
Mr. Kolb: It was wartime.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: And when you moved here you had several children already, right?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I had three children and the fourth one on the way.
Mr. Kolb: On the way?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah. David was born here in ’44.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, that’s right, David.
Mrs. Alspaugh: April.
Mr. Kolb: That’s your youngest.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Yes, okay, I forgot about that. You were pregnant when you were moving?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Where did you live initially?
Mrs. Alspaugh: This house was not finished when we came, and we stayed with my mother and father in Knoxville.
Mr. Kolb: Your mother and father lived in Knoxville.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: I didn’t know that. For how long about?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Probably six weeks.
Mr. Kolb: Just a short time.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Until they finished up here.
Mr. Kolb: Then you moved into this house [122 Meadow Road]?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Moved in the house.
Mr. Kolb: Was that late ’43 or early ’44 probably?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, late ’43.
Mr. Kolb: Late ’43.
Mrs. Alspaugh: ’Cause we came in October.
Mr. Kolb: And you and your family have always had this house ever since?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Always.
Mr. Kolb: And your daughter and son-in-law now own it?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, and David owned it in between time.
Mr. Kolb: So it stayed in the family the whole time.
Mrs. Alspaugh: It stayed in the family.
Mr. Kolb: One of the few, I guess. So then Al had to commute to Oak Ridge every day initially from Knoxville?
Mrs. Alspaugh: From Knoxville.
Mr. Kolb: Did he have a car to do that, or did he ride a bus, or what?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh no, he had a car.
Mr. Kolb: He had a car. I see. ’Cause I knew there were buses that bussed people too, but he had a car.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: And you had enough gas to do it.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Gas was a problem back then. So then you moved in late ’43 into this house. Who were your neighbors back then on this street? Do you remember?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, we didn’t hardly have any because, see, a lot of the houses were not occupied. They were just inching up.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, this was one of the first houses that was here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: But then you did get neighbors eventually.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yes. And a few of those neighbors are still here.
Mr. Kolb: Who is that?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Helen Bissell.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And –
Mr. Kolb: Vera Davis?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, I don’t think Vera was here at the beginning, but I’m not sure. But she’s here now.
Mr. Kolb: She’s here now, I know, and she’s an early Oak Ridger. But the Bissells came –
Mrs. Alspaugh: But there’s not many.
Mr. Kolb: Just a few, yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: You don’t remember any others off-hand? Just the Bissells, for sure?
Mrs. Alspaugh: But the Bissells, only ones that I remember.
Mr. Kolb: On Meadows Hill?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Uh-hunh.
Mr. Kolb: Right.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I’m not sure just when they moved in.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, and this street out here, what shape was it in?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, it was in terrible shape. We had a ditch along the front of our –
Mr. Kolb: House?
Mrs. Alspaugh: – house, and we had a little foot log sort of a thing over that ditch to get to the street.
Mr. Kolb: And the street was what, unpaved, just dirt?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yes, it was unpaved.
Mr. Kolb: Muddy?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Muddy.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, just like all the other streets, initially.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yes.
Mr. Kolb: Was there a boardwalk along the street at all, or no?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: No.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: Not here.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We had a boardwalk here to New York Avenue, in the woods.
Mr. Kolb: Connected up to New York, right through the woods. And so you all had a car here.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We had a car.
Mr. Kolb: Did Al have to ride the buses much to go to work? I guess not.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: He just used the car to go to work?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Did you ride the buses much?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: No. How about the children?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, they went to Cedar Hill and they didn’t have to ride a bus. They walked.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, just walked up the street. They walked to the school. So it was real convenient, pretty much.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah. And they started going to [school] – was that school –
Mrs. Alspaugh: And then they went to junior high, which – they still walked, because it just was down on, what, I don’t know what street that is.
Mr. Kolb: Where the Blankenship Field is now, above there?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, that’s Kentucky, I believe.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah, Kentucky.
Mr. Kolb: Now when you moved here, was Cedar Hill School finished? Did they start going to school right away?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No. Our children started out at Elm Grove –
Mr. Kolb: Okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: – and then we came to Pine Valley –
Mr. Kolb: Oh my goodness.
Mrs. Alspaugh: – and then to Cedar Hill.
Mr. Kolb: They walked down Grove from here? That’s pretty good distance, pretty good walk.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t remember.
Mr. Kolb: That’s pretty good distance.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We probably took them.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: They probably took a bus or something. I don’t recall that. I just, and they didn’t go too awful long.
Mr. Kolb: Right, cause that’s on the other side of Jackson Square.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Pretty good walk for young children.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Right.
Mr. Kolb: But I know there were buses that you could ride.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that��s probably what they did.
Mr. Kolb: So where did you shop here in Oak Ridge?
Mrs. Alspaugh: At Pine Valley.
Mr. Kolb: At Pine Valley.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Uh-hunh.
Mr. Kolb: There a grocery store there?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, there was a grocery store there.
Mr. Kolb: Okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And then we shopped at Townsite down there.
Mr. Kolb: Jackson Square.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Jackson Square. But that was later.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah. What was the name of the first department store there? I used to know it, but I’ve forgotten. Was it Loveman’s? Wasn’t there a Loveman’s?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, there was a Loveman’s, and that was probably what it was.
Mr. Kolb: I know they were in Jackson Square there where Jacob’s Engineering is now. And there was a grocery store there too?
Mrs. Alspaugh: The White Store was there, but I don’t know how soon that was there, and the Theater was down there.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, where the Playhouse is now.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, no, not where the Playhouse is. It was over there close to Big Ed’s.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, you’re right. That was the Theater. What was where the Playhouse is now?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t know.
Mr. Kolb: Okay. The Theater was down the street.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, I remember going there. [Of] course, your parents still lived in Knoxville.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Knoxville.
Mr. Kolb: So you had kinfolk on your side pretty close by. Now Al’s were in North Carolina.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Taylorsville?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Did your parents come out here much, or did you go to visit them very much in Knoxville? Or did you have time?
Mrs. Alspaugh: We didn’t have much time, but we did both. We’d get Daddy a pass, and he could come out here. But mostly we went in there. But mostly we didn’t go anywhere.
Mr. Kolb: Is that right? Just too busy?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, and with little ones –
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, you were busy.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I was busy, and of course Al was busy.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, and he worked at Y-12?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Y-12.
Mr. Kolb: He worked Y-12 his whole career?
Mrs. Alspaugh: All the time.
Mr. Kolb: And of course you didn’t know why he was out there, exactly.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, if he knew, I didn’t know.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, right.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, he didn’t talk.
Mr. Kolb: Right. You weren’t supposed to, and you didn’t.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: Right. What did your father think of Oak Ridge when he came out here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, they had told us about Oak Ridge, so of course they thought it was wonderful that we were this close, because we’d been married ten years and hadn’t ever lived close to them, so they were glad to have us this close.
Mr. Kolb: Right. I just mean, coming out to this new town, that must have been kind of crazy for him. Just as crazy as it was for you. Were you glad you came here or did you just sort of –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yeah, we were always happy here.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah. But those first years were kind of tough, I mean –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, they were tough for everybody.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, that’s right, in wartime.
Mrs. Alspaugh: You didn’t worry about that.
Mr. Kolb: Right. The mud, you sort of got used to.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yeah, that didn’t bother me.
Mr. Kolb: That didn’t bother you?
Mrs. Alspaugh: The only thing, we didn’t have telephones, because when it was time for David to come, why, I had to send Mary out over to New York Avenue to a friend’s house that was going to take me to the hospital. Al was out of town.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, no.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes. So she took me to the hospital.
Mr. Kolb: Who was that, do you remember, the friend?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well yes, I remember, she was Mrs. Leroy Campbell. They’re not, they didn’t stay here too long. In fact we’re, Mary Ann and I are going to visit her.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, I see.
Mrs. Alspaugh: In Newton, North Carolina.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, North Carolina. Depending on friends, which everyone did, of course.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, and I think he came home that day. He and Ralph, he had to take Ralph with him, and they had gone to North Carolina to pick up another car that his father had. So, that’s the reason they were gone.
Mr. Kolb: Was Ralph old enough to drive?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh no, he was little.
Mr. Kolb: He just went with him.
Mrs. Alspaugh: He just went with him.
Mr. Kolb: Went with him, okay. So when he got back, he had a new son.
Mrs. Alspaugh: He did.
Mr. Kolb: Exciting day. Wow. Well, with all the rationing going on, how did you make out?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, I stood in line just like everybody else did, over at Pine Valley.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, right, long lines and just –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Long lines.
Mr. Kolb: Got time to gossip and chat and visit?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, time to visit with the people.
Mr. Kolb: Right, your neighbors, or you made friends. And you came within a year of the beginning, I guess. You know, September 19th was the day that General Groves first came to Oak Ridge, so that’s really our sixtieth birthday, in two more days, September 19th. So you came probably within a year of that.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: So Oak Ridge was still pretty new when you came here.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes.
Mr. Kolb: And things were still changing rapidly.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes.
Mr. Kolb: New streets and everything just changing all the time.
Mrs. Alspaugh: That’s right.
Mr. Kolb: Did your children like school? Did they have good teachers?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Did you know the teachers?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Very good teachers at Cedar Hill.
Mr. Kolb: Did you remember any names of their teachers, off-hand?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, Miss Huffman was a teacher, and, of course, what was his name that died?
Mr. Kolb: Tall, yeah, I think I know who you���re –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Dodd?
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, Charlie Dodd.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Dodd, yeah.
Mr. Kolb: He became a principal. Was he at Pine Valley? He was at Pine Valley, I believe.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: Wasn’t? Cedar Hill, okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Herbert Dodd.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, Herbert. He was the principal. Teachers who you remember off-hand?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, Miss Huffman, I remember. She was, I think, a first grade teacher. I liked her so much. She lived over here on Michigan, and –
Mr. Kolb: Did the teachers come and stay here through the war?
Mrs. Alspaugh: As far as I know. I know Miss Huffman stayed, and Mr. Dodd stayed.
Mr. Kolb: The impression I have is that the teachers were paid probably better than in the surrounding areas, so they probably knew they had a good job here.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: So that’s why they got better than average teachers too.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that’s right.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, the Army didn’t stint on that. So you had a lot of standing in line, a lot of waiting for meat and groceries and –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Bread.
Mr. Kolb: – other things that were short. But did you ever go to shopping in Clinton or even go to Knoxville to shop for like furniture, things you couldn’t find here, or you just bought pretty much here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: We just moved our things from Taylorsville over here.
Mr. Kolb: You already had a household, so you –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes. We didn’t go to Knoxville much. Although the security was pretty tight, and I had to –
Mr. Kolb: Oh yeah, right. You know, that Secret City aspect, people just can’t hardly comprehend that these days. Did you ever see any evidence of it in town, other than just people didn’t talk about what they did at work?
Mrs. Alspaugh: They didn’t talk.
Mr. Kolb: There were signs up all around about being quiet and that sort of thing.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: But that’s what people did, I guess.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that’s right.
Mr. Kolb: And I’ve been told that families having a fenced town, that they felt secure in letting their children do things, because they weren’t worried about them being kidnapped or apprehended, and so they had kind of a loose style.
Mrs. Alspaugh: That’s right. We felt very safe here. We never locked the door.
Mr. Kolb: Of course, people generally back there didn’t do that as much as we do today either, but that’s right, you didn’t lock your doors. You trusted your neighbors, basically.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: So in that sense, it was a good situation, maybe better than average.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: And in fact after the War, ’49, when the gates were opened, I understood the first vote that was taken, that it was turned down, that people didn’t want to have an open town. They turned it –
Mrs. Alspaugh: We felt good having –
Mr. Kolb: You just wanted to keep it the way it was.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Did you vote to keep it closed, or do you remember?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t remember.
Mr. Kolb: But they did take a vote as I recall.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Is that right? I don’t, I didn’t even –
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, they did.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Al was pretty busy.
Mr. Kolb: He was still pretty busy.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Now another thing that was kind of unique about Oak Ridge, I understand, is that Anderson County was a dry county, like most of the counties around here, and yet there was liquor in Oak Ridge, just like there was anywhere else, from bootleggers. Did that affect you one way or the other?
Mrs. Alspaugh: See, I wasn’t into that, so it didn’t bother me one way or the other.
Mr. Kolb: But Al didn’t make any homebrew or anything like that, like some people did?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh no.
Mr. Kolb: People could do that legally, I guess. Well then, other than your family, what did you do for recreation? Do you remember off-hand?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Whatever we did at church, our church. When we first came, we didn’t have a Lutheran church in Oak Ridge, and we went to Knoxville.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, every Sunday, you went to Knoxville, for a while?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes. And when we got a church out at East Village, why, we went out there until we built our church here in town.
Mr. Kolb: Where did you first meet? What kind of building was it that you first met in?
Mrs. Alspaugh: It’s still there.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, was it the East Village Chapel?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that’s right.
Mr. Kolb: East Village Chapel, so-called?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, East Village Chapel.
Mr. Kolb: And it’s still there. It’s now a Baptist church isn’t it?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t know.
Mr. Kolb: Okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Several churches, I think, met there at different times.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, right, you had to take turns.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, but we had Sunday morning.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, and then you went to school and church both or just church? Did you have time for Sunday school? Do you remember?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Seems like we had Sunday school too. I remember Pastor Grum teaching Bible class.
Mr. Kolb: And your Pastor Grum, did he come here as the –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, our first pastor was Pastor Seek.
Mr. Kolb: Seek, that’s right, an older man?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Older man.
Mr. Kolb: Was he already retired or something like that?
Mrs. Alspaugh: He was ill, and he had to stay in a dormitory, and he had a hard time getting food and everything, and I’d have him up here for his breakfast and sort of took him under –
Mr. Kolb: But he stayed in the dorm.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Was his wife not with him?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, at first she wasn’t, but then later they did move out in East Village.
Mr. Kolb: But this was like a mission church, kind of, initially.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Pastor Groridge came out to help.
Mr. Kolb: Pastor who?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Groridge.
Mr. Kolb: Groridge?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Groridge. G-R-O-R-I, but he was at Highland View. I mean, he had services at Highland View. There was two of them.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, the school? In the school?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, church.
Mr. Kolb: Highland View Church.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, it was a school. It’s where the Museum is now. I mean, the Children’s Museum.
Mr. Kolb: I didn’t know that. You met at Highland View for a while.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, and he stayed with us for six months, with four children.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, stayed with you? He stayed with you here? With your family?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: So you had your four children and his four children?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, he didn’t have any children. He didn’t even have a wife. I mean, he’d had one, but he came here alone.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, he lived with you, with your family.
Mrs. Alspaugh: For six months.
Mr. Kolb: I see, ’cause he probably couldn’t get housing at that time.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, I don’t remember. No, they never moved here. He had a son in the Army then that was killed, so that happened all while he was here. It was sad.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, my. And Grum came after him?
Mrs. Alspaugh: After Seek. See Seek and Groridge were here.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, and then Grum?
Mrs. Alspaugh: And then Grum.
Mr. Kolb: And then he stayed for several years.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Yes, okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I still write to her.
Mr. Kolb: He went to California, didn’t he?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes. He went from here to California. Then he went to Hawaii.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, but his wife’s in California now?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: So, as far as recreation, you didn’t go bowling?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, no. I didn’t have time to bowl.
Mr. Kolb: Or dances on the tennis courts?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, now, we belong to the ’43.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: The square dance group.
Mr. Kolb: Where do you square-dance?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Over at Pine Valley.
Mr. Kolb: In the school?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: You ever square-dance outside in the summertime? Just in the school, inside?
Mrs. Alspaugh: In their gym.
Mr. Kolb: Remember who your caller might have been?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, we had a good one. I can’t think of his name.
Mr. Kolb: Well that’s okay. Just thought I’d ask. We had a caller named, oh I can’t think of his name too, Tyler, Taylor, over in Knoxville when we first started square dancing back in the sixties. So your church, Faith Lutheran Church was pretty much your social outlet.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, we had a pinochle club in the church, and we played –
Mr. Kolb: Oh, okay, I didn’t know that, pinochle club.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And then we played bridge. We had a little bridge group in the church. And everything was church that we did, well, we did with the church.
Mr. Kolb: Right, they had a lot of young mothers just like yourself.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, everybody was about the same age.
Mr. Kolb: I guess that you met the Bigelows when they came in ’49, Merless and Bob Bigelow.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We were the first people that they met. They came on Saturday and we met them on Sunday at church out at East Village.
Mr. Kolb: Okay. You were still in East Village then, in ’49?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yeah.
Mr. Kolb: The Kinebergers were here, I guess, and the Schimmels, Bill and Louise Schimmel.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, not both of them, but Bill got married here.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, but he was here early.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah. Arnie Johnson.
Mr. Kolb: Arnie Johnson, I know, was early.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And Ellen.
Mr. Kolb: The years went by so fast, you hardly remember. It’s just a blur.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And the Holmes were here pretty early.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, yeah, Dick and his wife, both. Were they married when they came here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Did you have much contact with Baptists or Methodists or Presbyterians? There were all kinds of people here, from all over the country.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I know and I had a good neighbor down here that was a Church of Christ, and –
Mr. Kolb: All different branches, and –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Different places.
Mr. Kolb: All these churches were just like Faith Lutheran. They were all growing up, starting and putting down their roots.
Mrs. Alspaugh: But, you know, with taking care of the family and doing what I did in the church, there wasn’t time for – and then the Bromleys lived across the street, and they didn’t socialize much.
Mr. Kolb: Just knew them casually.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, and Coneybears lived next to them [119 Meadow Road].
Mr. Kolb: Coney Bear?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Coneybear. And their daughter is still Judy’s best friend. In fact they’re in Atlanta now, and she comes, they come up and visit Judy and me.
Mr. Kolb: Oh. How is that spelled, Bear?
Mrs. Alspaugh: C-O-N-E-Y-B-E-A-R.
Mr. Kolb: B-E-A-R, that’s what I thought.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Coneybear.
Mr. Kolb: You know, Oak Ridge was, and still is, kind of different or unique in that respect. We have so many different kinds [of people], even [people that come from countries] everywhere, and it’s different. It’s not like your typical Tennessee town in that respect.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, no. There are people here from all over.
Mr. Kolb: But coming from North Carolina, it was not a huge change. I mean, it was a lot of similarities.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes. And we lived in a small town.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, Taylorsville is kind of small.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Now, I was raised in Gastonia, which was close to Charlotte, and that wasn’t so small, but –
Mr. Kolb: But Al came from Taylorsville?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: That’s a smaller town, too. Isn’t that where they make furniture a lot?
Mrs. Alspaugh: And hickories. North Carolina’s big in furniture.
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Mrs. Alspaugh: Was their daughter Colleen Black?
Mr. Kolb: Yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Seems like that. I knew Colleen.
Mr. Kolb: Colleen Black told me once that she belonged to a sewing club. They met one evening, and the next morning, a man came and questioned one of her neighbors and asked her neighbor, this woman, what they talked about in their sewing [club] when they met. He saw these cars or people going to this house, and he was checking up on what they were talking about. He was a security person. Did you ever hear about that kind of thing going on?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: But it did.
Mrs. Alspaugh: It did.
Mr. Kolb: So there were ears planted here and there, even though you weren’t aware of it. But it was there, you know. Well, did you participate in the war effort through having a victory garden or buying war bonds and that sort of thing?
Mrs. Alspaugh: We probably bought war bonds, but probably not too many because it took what we had to survive. Now, we didn’t have a garden.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, not that at least. [Did you] collect aluminum foil back then? I remember collecting milkweed, which was a substitute for silk. Milkweed is just a wild plant. We collected these seed pods and turned them in, and they passed them on, and they used that in place of silk, ’cause silk came from the Orient. Couldn’t get silk in the wartime, of course; the Japanese had it all. So that was one of the wartime things that –
Mrs. Alspaugh: The only thing that my children did was catch June bugs.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, they caught June bugs. What was that for?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well –
Mr. Kolb: What were they used for?
Mrs. Alspaugh: They did that till not too many years ago.
Mr. Kolb: You mean the ones that fluoresce?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, the ones that light up.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, that was for the Biology Division, I believe, out here at the Plant. I think they used them some way out there.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, they did that for a long time.
Mrs. Alspaugh: A long time.
Mr. Kolb: And they did it back then? Or sometime?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, I don’t know how soon it started.
Mr. Kolb: But you remember they did it. They don’t do that anymore, I don’t think, but it wasn’t too many years ago they were still doing it. Well, did you have any contact with any black people? There weren’t very many, I know, but did you have any contact with any of [them], or [see] them? They weren���t living here. They lived over in Gamble Valley, I guess. It wasn’t here.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t know. I didn’t have contact with them, but they were here.
Mr. Kolb: You saw them around.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah.
Mr. Kolb: But you didn’t have much contact, because they were pretty much relegated over to Scarboro area.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: As I understand, their jobs were kind of the menial jobs, the housekeeping or janitorial, or that kind of thing.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And how long have we had our janitor?
Mr. Kolb: Just over 50 years. We celebrated [our] fiftieth anniversary – was it last year?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, seems like.
Mr. Kolb: So that would make him – he came here in the fifties – back when I came in ’54, he was a janitor. So it was before ’54. Theo. Can’t think of his last name.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I never knew anything but Theo.
Mr. Kolb: Theo. I can’t recall his last name either, and times change real rapidly. Kids grew up, the town got opened up, and then when did you buy this house from whoever sold it, MSI or whoever?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Seems like it was in the fifties.
Mr. Kolb: Late fifties.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Late fifties that we bought it, but the date, I don’t remember.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, ’57 or ’58, I think. Something like that, when they started selling the property. You bought it without thinking about it. You didn’t want to move.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, no.
Mr. Kolb: This was a nice location.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah, it was a good location.
Mr. Kolb: Quiet street, not a lot of traffic.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, and then we just had Townsite down here, and even when they built across the street, or down across the Turnpike, why, that was later.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, you mean where the shopping mall is now.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, that’s later.
Mrs. Alspaugh: You know, when we lived here, there was nothing across the Turnpike.
Mr. Kolb: Really?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No buildings at all.
Mr. Kolb: Wasn’t there a recreation hall there of some kind, I thought?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Not that I know of.
Mr. Kolb: You mean initially.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Initially.
Mr. Kolb: But did it have one later, during the war? ’Cause I know there was a rec hall there. That’s what I was told. I’ve seen a map. And I think there was a couple stores later.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: You remember all the temporary housing that was around, the hutments?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, they were here, but I didn’t come in contact with them much.
Mr. Kolb: Weren’t in this neighborhood, I guess.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No. We had the flattops. We had flattops down this street here.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, you did?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes.
Mr. Kolb: And they were moved after the war?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: And then houses built in their place?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: And the houses they built were cemestos, just like this one?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, I don’t think those are cemesto houses. I think people bought the lots and –
Mr. Kolb: Oh, after the town was opened up.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, flattops were here until –
Mr. Kolb: Where they could be picked up easily and moved out.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Moved out. You’d see them scattered all over the state. People would buy them and live in them.
Mr. Kolb: Of course we still have some, up on West Outer near Illinois. There are still a lot of flattops, but they’ve got roofs on them now. But they’re still flattops.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, and some of them don’t have any [roofs].
Mr. Kolb: Is that right? There’s still some?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, I’ve seen some.
[break in recording]
Mr. Kolb: Louise, do you remember the day when the first bomb was dropped on Japan, and you heard about it, where you were and what people did [once] the big news was out [that] Oak Ridge was part of the atom bomb project? Remember what you were doing about then? That would have been about August 6th or August 7th, ’45. I believe that was the date. The secret was out.
Mrs. Alspaugh: You know, Jim, I don’t. I know we were at home here.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We had radios, but we didn’t have any TVs then.
Mr. Kolb: Thought I heard that Y-12 workers were sent home early and had a big party down in Jackson Square.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t remember that.
Mr. Kolb: But did you have any discussion with your parents when they found out what was going on?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, if we did, I don’t remember.
Mr. Kolb: That was a different day, the day the secret was out. Then the secrecy was over and Al could talk about what he did.
Mrs. Alspaugh: But he never did. He never did.
Mr. Kolb: So he must have been working on the calutrons that enriched the uranium. That’s where the bomb material came for the Hiroshima bomb, from Y-12, not from K-25. [Do you remember] the day that the city gates were open and the big parade was held and all the dignitaries were here? Did you go down and see the parade?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, I remember that.
Mr. Kolb: Where did you see the parade from? What part of town were you in?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I think down there.
Mr. Kolb: And every state had a delegation. They had every state represented, there was people here from every state –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, everywhere.
Mr. Kolb: Plus some of the foreign countries, too. So North Carolina would have been represented, your state. Are there any other unique incidents you might remember, strange things that happened that jump out in your mind about things that went on here, or happened to your children?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Of course, by then we were active in school.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, which was Pine Valley.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Cedar Hill.
Mr. Kolb: Cedar Hill.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Cedar Hill, and then Jefferson, and then when they built the new high school.
Mr. Kolb: What year would that have been, about? ’50s? Born in –
Mrs. Alspaugh: He was born in ’35.
Mr. Kolb: ’35, okay, so he would have been in high school in the early ’50s then.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: So was he under Jack Armstrong? Coach Armstrong?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: They had some good teams back then.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Was that when Jackie Pope was a running back?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, they had one of their best teams back then.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And he got a scholarship to UT.
Mr. Kolb: I didn’t know that he had a scholarship. I’m not sure exactly when he went.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And then the children were doing it. And then they went to college.
Mr. Kolb: Right. Did Mary Ann go to college?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Mary Ann got married.
Mr. Kolb: She got married right out of high school? Yeah, she and David went to college.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And Ralph, yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Ralph, yeah, and then you’re back here now again. So you got a family history right in these four walls.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Four walls.
Mr. Kolb: More than four walls, ’cause there’s eight walls. There’s four up there and four down here in your apartment. You’ve got a beautiful backyard here too.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes. Al dug this yard out when the children were small and leveled it off so they���d have a place to play.
Mr. Kolb: [You] say, ‘dug it out.’ Was it more of a hill or something?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah. It was just a hill.
Mr. Kolb: Had to move a lot of dirt out?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And he’d just push it all down there. And they had a basketball court out there, and they used to have dances out there, the high school kids.
Mr. Kolb: In the backyard here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, my goodness, wow.
Mrs. Alspaugh: They had a good time.
Mr. Kolb: Well, there’s something else I forgot to ask you about. I know Al was active in the Flintstones music group at church, right?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I was too.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, you were too? What did you play?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I sang.
Mr. Kolb: You sang. And who else, let’s see, there was Ed Brock, right?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I’ve got a picture of that.
[break in recording]
Mr. Kolb: When did this music group called Flintstones start, about? Was it when your kids were still young or a little bit later?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, they were probably in high school and – I should have had that marked.
Mr. Kolb: Let’s see, was that after the Straches moved here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes. Well, it was during that time, because Strache was in it.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, Ed Brock.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Ed Brock, oh here is one, but let’s see.
Mr. Kolb: And then Paul Kasten. Here you are.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, but I’ve got some –
Mr. Kolb: Here’s another one.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Well you had fancy outfits on, too.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, yes, we made those.
Mr. Kolb: There’s Ed Brock, yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We were real close to Ed and Lois, and they just lived up here on Kentucky.
Mr. Kolb: Is that right? I had forgotten about that.
Mrs. Alspaugh: There’s C. Straches, and Chuck Schmitt.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, Chuck Schmitt.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Chuck Schmitt.
Mr. Kolb: And Paul Kasten, was he the – played the piano?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah, and Bernice, and Muellers, Ken Muellers. I guess that was about the bunch.
Mr. Kolb: Okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I’ve got, I thought I had a good picture.
Mr. Kolb: You just played at church outings or did you go to other, any other places or –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Listen, we played for different organizations. We played for a teacher’s convention in Gatlinburg, to five hundred –
Mr. Kolb: My goodness.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah, we were big time.
Mr. Kolb: Were you making big money back then?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah.
Mr. Kolb: You probably got a free meal every once in a while, right?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, we did. We had a lot of fun with that.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, and you sang. Who else sang? Did Lois Brock sing?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, all the women.
Mr. Kolb: Bernice?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Bernice, and Adelaide Strache.
Mr. Kolb: Adelaide Strache, and did Toni Schmitt sing?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Let��s see. You had a pretty good size bunch.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Was that Paul right there? He’s kind of small. That’s Ed playing the base, Ed Brock, I remember that.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, this is –
Mr. Kolb: I��m not sure who –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well there’s Paul.
Mr. Kolb: He has glasses on, so it looks like Paul to me.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that’s Paul.
Mr. Kolb: Is that Ted Mueller?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, this is Al.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, that’s Al playing the banjo. That’s right, he had a banjo.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Now, we’ve got a better picture. Oh, here it is.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, Lord, yeah, here we go. Oh, here’s our church.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, and this is Ted Mueller.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, there’s Al.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Al.
Mr. Kolb: Was that Arnie?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Arnie.
Mr. Kolb: And Ed.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Ed Brock, somewhere.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Here he is.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, sitting down, yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Lois and I used to do the Charleston.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, Lord, do the Charleston.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I know it, that’s what, oh, Lord.
Mr. Kolb: I didn’t know you had that reputation.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, it’s not – we don’t travel that around.
Mr. Kolb: You don’t want to have that news get out?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: That you were a dancing girl? Very good. I remember the Flintstones. In fact, Paul Kasten had all that paraphernalia, and I helped him, he wanted to get rid of it a couple years ago, and I didn’t want to take it down to a flea market. Some of it we did, but I think your son David got some of that, just to keep some of it in the family, because he didn’t want to lose all of it. But that was kind of unique. There were probably other groups similar to that around town. It just a catchall kind of informal musicians of sorts.
Mrs. Alspaugh: But we had a good time.
Mr. Kolb: Well, between that and your pinochle and your card games and square dancing, you had enough to keep you busy.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We did. We didn’t really need anything else, because we didn’t have time for anything else.
Mr. Kolb: That’s right. It was a busy time, and –
Mrs. Alspaugh: And I made some good friends. Down on Malvern, I had two good friends down there. They’re both gone by now. We’re getting to that age, you know.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, that’s right, they’re going right and left unfortunately. Well, anything else you want to say, that’s fine. Otherwise, we’re just about done. It’s up to you Louise. You have done a good job reminiscing. Now you are a unique survivor of the Secret City of Oak Ridge. When they started the town, they didn’t plan on it being a town forever, you know. They thought it might blow away for all anyone knew.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I know it. I have friends who said, “Oh well, it’s not going to last much longer.” I said, “Don’t kid yourself.”
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, they put all this money in here, it’s not gonna just be wasted. And that’s true, that’s the way it worked out, all those facilities out there. They only designed these houses for ten years, and here we are sixty years later.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: They’re as good as new. Well, not as good as new, but –
Mrs. Alspaugh: They were good, good houses.
Mr. Kolb: I’ve been told by people that got cemestos that the hardwood floors are better than you can get today.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that’s right.
Mr. Kolb: And I don’t doubt it, yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: And the wood came right from these hills. They cut all the oak trees down.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Judy’s got one bedroom that’s refinished, upstairs, and they’re beautiful.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, sure. And they’re beautiful homes.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I’m real comfortable here. It’s just enough for me to take care of.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, that’s right, you don’t need a lot.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Uhn-uhn.
Mr. Kolb: Well I’m gonna just turn this off here and thank you for your kind remarks, okay?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Good
Mr. Kolb: Very good.
[break in recording]
Mr. Kolb: Well, Louise, you just told us about how the article in the Oak Ridger on September the 13th of 2001 highlighted your home here, and the history of your home, that your daughter Judy now owns, and shows a picture of the WWII home that you started in, and it’s all well described in that article, September 13th.
[end of recording]

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ORAL HISTORY OF LOUISE ALSPAUGH
Interviewed by Jim Kolb
September 17, 2002
Mr. Kolb: Louise, why don’t we start out by letting you tell us when and why you and your family came to Oak Ridge.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Okay, we came in 1943. My husband was called over here by Union Carbide. He was working with Duke Power Company in Taylorsville, but he was called over here, so that’s the reason we came. It was during the war.
Mr. Kolb: He was called.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, they wrote him a letter and asked him to come.
Mr. Kolb: And his work was what?
Mrs. Alspaugh: He was in the Electrical Department.
Mr. Kolb: So they must have needed electrical type people.
Mrs. Alspaugh: They evidently did. Duke Power did not want to release him, but they did finally.
Mr. Kolb: It was wartime.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: And when you moved here you had several children already, right?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I had three children and the fourth one on the way.
Mr. Kolb: On the way?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah. David was born here in ’44.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, that’s right, David.
Mrs. Alspaugh: April.
Mr. Kolb: That’s your youngest.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Yes, okay, I forgot about that. You were pregnant when you were moving?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Where did you live initially?
Mrs. Alspaugh: This house was not finished when we came, and we stayed with my mother and father in Knoxville.
Mr. Kolb: Your mother and father lived in Knoxville.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: I didn’t know that. For how long about?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Probably six weeks.
Mr. Kolb: Just a short time.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Until they finished up here.
Mr. Kolb: Then you moved into this house [122 Meadow Road]?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Moved in the house.
Mr. Kolb: Was that late ’43 or early ’44 probably?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, late ’43.
Mr. Kolb: Late ’43.
Mrs. Alspaugh: ’Cause we came in October.
Mr. Kolb: And you and your family have always had this house ever since?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Always.
Mr. Kolb: And your daughter and son-in-law now own it?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, and David owned it in between time.
Mr. Kolb: So it stayed in the family the whole time.
Mrs. Alspaugh: It stayed in the family.
Mr. Kolb: One of the few, I guess. So then Al had to commute to Oak Ridge every day initially from Knoxville?
Mrs. Alspaugh: From Knoxville.
Mr. Kolb: Did he have a car to do that, or did he ride a bus, or what?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh no, he had a car.
Mr. Kolb: He had a car. I see. ’Cause I knew there were buses that bussed people too, but he had a car.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: And you had enough gas to do it.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Gas was a problem back then. So then you moved in late ’43 into this house. Who were your neighbors back then on this street? Do you remember?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, we didn’t hardly have any because, see, a lot of the houses were not occupied. They were just inching up.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, this was one of the first houses that was here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: But then you did get neighbors eventually.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yes. And a few of those neighbors are still here.
Mr. Kolb: Who is that?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Helen Bissell.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And –
Mr. Kolb: Vera Davis?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, I don’t think Vera was here at the beginning, but I’m not sure. But she’s here now.
Mr. Kolb: She’s here now, I know, and she’s an early Oak Ridger. But the Bissells came –
Mrs. Alspaugh: But there’s not many.
Mr. Kolb: Just a few, yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: You don’t remember any others off-hand? Just the Bissells, for sure?
Mrs. Alspaugh: But the Bissells, only ones that I remember.
Mr. Kolb: On Meadows Hill?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Uh-hunh.
Mr. Kolb: Right.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I’m not sure just when they moved in.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, and this street out here, what shape was it in?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, it was in terrible shape. We had a ditch along the front of our –
Mr. Kolb: House?
Mrs. Alspaugh: – house, and we had a little foot log sort of a thing over that ditch to get to the street.
Mr. Kolb: And the street was what, unpaved, just dirt?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yes, it was unpaved.
Mr. Kolb: Muddy?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Muddy.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, just like all the other streets, initially.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yes.
Mr. Kolb: Was there a boardwalk along the street at all, or no?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: No.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: Not here.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We had a boardwalk here to New York Avenue, in the woods.
Mr. Kolb: Connected up to New York, right through the woods. And so you all had a car here.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We had a car.
Mr. Kolb: Did Al have to ride the buses much to go to work? I guess not.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: He just used the car to go to work?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Did you ride the buses much?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: No. How about the children?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, they went to Cedar Hill and they didn’t have to ride a bus. They walked.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, just walked up the street. They walked to the school. So it was real convenient, pretty much.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah. And they started going to [school] – was that school –
Mrs. Alspaugh: And then they went to junior high, which – they still walked, because it just was down on, what, I don’t know what street that is.
Mr. Kolb: Where the Blankenship Field is now, above there?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, that’s Kentucky, I believe.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah, Kentucky.
Mr. Kolb: Now when you moved here, was Cedar Hill School finished? Did they start going to school right away?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No. Our children started out at Elm Grove –
Mr. Kolb: Okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: – and then we came to Pine Valley –
Mr. Kolb: Oh my goodness.
Mrs. Alspaugh: – and then to Cedar Hill.
Mr. Kolb: They walked down Grove from here? That’s pretty good distance, pretty good walk.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t remember.
Mr. Kolb: That’s pretty good distance.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We probably took them.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: They probably took a bus or something. I don’t recall that. I just, and they didn’t go too awful long.
Mr. Kolb: Right, cause that’s on the other side of Jackson Square.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Pretty good walk for young children.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Right.
Mr. Kolb: But I know there were buses that you could ride.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that��s probably what they did.
Mr. Kolb: So where did you shop here in Oak Ridge?
Mrs. Alspaugh: At Pine Valley.
Mr. Kolb: At Pine Valley.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Uh-hunh.
Mr. Kolb: There a grocery store there?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, there was a grocery store there.
Mr. Kolb: Okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And then we shopped at Townsite down there.
Mr. Kolb: Jackson Square.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Jackson Square. But that was later.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah. What was the name of the first department store there? I used to know it, but I’ve forgotten. Was it Loveman’s? Wasn’t there a Loveman’s?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, there was a Loveman’s, and that was probably what it was.
Mr. Kolb: I know they were in Jackson Square there where Jacob’s Engineering is now. And there was a grocery store there too?
Mrs. Alspaugh: The White Store was there, but I don’t know how soon that was there, and the Theater was down there.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, where the Playhouse is now.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, no, not where the Playhouse is. It was over there close to Big Ed’s.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, you’re right. That was the Theater. What was where the Playhouse is now?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t know.
Mr. Kolb: Okay. The Theater was down the street.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, I remember going there. [Of] course, your parents still lived in Knoxville.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Knoxville.
Mr. Kolb: So you had kinfolk on your side pretty close by. Now Al’s were in North Carolina.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Taylorsville?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Did your parents come out here much, or did you go to visit them very much in Knoxville? Or did you have time?
Mrs. Alspaugh: We didn’t have much time, but we did both. We’d get Daddy a pass, and he could come out here. But mostly we went in there. But mostly we didn’t go anywhere.
Mr. Kolb: Is that right? Just too busy?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, and with little ones –
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, you were busy.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I was busy, and of course Al was busy.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, and he worked at Y-12?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Y-12.
Mr. Kolb: He worked Y-12 his whole career?
Mrs. Alspaugh: All the time.
Mr. Kolb: And of course you didn’t know why he was out there, exactly.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, if he knew, I didn’t know.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, right.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, he didn’t talk.
Mr. Kolb: Right. You weren’t supposed to, and you didn’t.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: Right. What did your father think of Oak Ridge when he came out here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, they had told us about Oak Ridge, so of course they thought it was wonderful that we were this close, because we’d been married ten years and hadn’t ever lived close to them, so they were glad to have us this close.
Mr. Kolb: Right. I just mean, coming out to this new town, that must have been kind of crazy for him. Just as crazy as it was for you. Were you glad you came here or did you just sort of –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yeah, we were always happy here.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah. But those first years were kind of tough, I mean –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, they were tough for everybody.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, that’s right, in wartime.
Mrs. Alspaugh: You didn’t worry about that.
Mr. Kolb: Right. The mud, you sort of got used to.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yeah, that didn’t bother me.
Mr. Kolb: That didn’t bother you?
Mrs. Alspaugh: The only thing, we didn’t have telephones, because when it was time for David to come, why, I had to send Mary out over to New York Avenue to a friend’s house that was going to take me to the hospital. Al was out of town.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, no.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes. So she took me to the hospital.
Mr. Kolb: Who was that, do you remember, the friend?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well yes, I remember, she was Mrs. Leroy Campbell. They’re not, they didn’t stay here too long. In fact we’re, Mary Ann and I are going to visit her.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, I see.
Mrs. Alspaugh: In Newton, North Carolina.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, North Carolina. Depending on friends, which everyone did, of course.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, and I think he came home that day. He and Ralph, he had to take Ralph with him, and they had gone to North Carolina to pick up another car that his father had. So, that’s the reason they were gone.
Mr. Kolb: Was Ralph old enough to drive?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh no, he was little.
Mr. Kolb: He just went with him.
Mrs. Alspaugh: He just went with him.
Mr. Kolb: Went with him, okay. So when he got back, he had a new son.
Mrs. Alspaugh: He did.
Mr. Kolb: Exciting day. Wow. Well, with all the rationing going on, how did you make out?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, I stood in line just like everybody else did, over at Pine Valley.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, right, long lines and just –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Long lines.
Mr. Kolb: Got time to gossip and chat and visit?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, time to visit with the people.
Mr. Kolb: Right, your neighbors, or you made friends. And you came within a year of the beginning, I guess. You know, September 19th was the day that General Groves first came to Oak Ridge, so that’s really our sixtieth birthday, in two more days, September 19th. So you came probably within a year of that.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: So Oak Ridge was still pretty new when you came here.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes.
Mr. Kolb: And things were still changing rapidly.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes.
Mr. Kolb: New streets and everything just changing all the time.
Mrs. Alspaugh: That’s right.
Mr. Kolb: Did your children like school? Did they have good teachers?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Did you know the teachers?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Very good teachers at Cedar Hill.
Mr. Kolb: Did you remember any names of their teachers, off-hand?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, Miss Huffman was a teacher, and, of course, what was his name that died?
Mr. Kolb: Tall, yeah, I think I know who you���re –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Dodd?
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, Charlie Dodd.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Dodd, yeah.
Mr. Kolb: He became a principal. Was he at Pine Valley? He was at Pine Valley, I believe.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: Wasn’t? Cedar Hill, okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Herbert Dodd.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, Herbert. He was the principal. Teachers who you remember off-hand?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, Miss Huffman, I remember. She was, I think, a first grade teacher. I liked her so much. She lived over here on Michigan, and –
Mr. Kolb: Did the teachers come and stay here through the war?
Mrs. Alspaugh: As far as I know. I know Miss Huffman stayed, and Mr. Dodd stayed.
Mr. Kolb: The impression I have is that the teachers were paid probably better than in the surrounding areas, so they probably knew they had a good job here.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: So that’s why they got better than average teachers too.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that’s right.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, the Army didn’t stint on that. So you had a lot of standing in line, a lot of waiting for meat and groceries and –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Bread.
Mr. Kolb: – other things that were short. But did you ever go to shopping in Clinton or even go to Knoxville to shop for like furniture, things you couldn’t find here, or you just bought pretty much here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: We just moved our things from Taylorsville over here.
Mr. Kolb: You already had a household, so you –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes. We didn’t go to Knoxville much. Although the security was pretty tight, and I had to –
Mr. Kolb: Oh yeah, right. You know, that Secret City aspect, people just can’t hardly comprehend that these days. Did you ever see any evidence of it in town, other than just people didn’t talk about what they did at work?
Mrs. Alspaugh: They didn’t talk.
Mr. Kolb: There were signs up all around about being quiet and that sort of thing.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: But that’s what people did, I guess.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that’s right.
Mr. Kolb: And I’ve been told that families having a fenced town, that they felt secure in letting their children do things, because they weren’t worried about them being kidnapped or apprehended, and so they had kind of a loose style.
Mrs. Alspaugh: That’s right. We felt very safe here. We never locked the door.
Mr. Kolb: Of course, people generally back there didn’t do that as much as we do today either, but that’s right, you didn’t lock your doors. You trusted your neighbors, basically.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: So in that sense, it was a good situation, maybe better than average.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: And in fact after the War, ’49, when the gates were opened, I understood the first vote that was taken, that it was turned down, that people didn’t want to have an open town. They turned it –
Mrs. Alspaugh: We felt good having –
Mr. Kolb: You just wanted to keep it the way it was.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Did you vote to keep it closed, or do you remember?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t remember.
Mr. Kolb: But they did take a vote as I recall.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Is that right? I don’t, I didn’t even –
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, they did.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Al was pretty busy.
Mr. Kolb: He was still pretty busy.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Now another thing that was kind of unique about Oak Ridge, I understand, is that Anderson County was a dry county, like most of the counties around here, and yet there was liquor in Oak Ridge, just like there was anywhere else, from bootleggers. Did that affect you one way or the other?
Mrs. Alspaugh: See, I wasn’t into that, so it didn’t bother me one way or the other.
Mr. Kolb: But Al didn’t make any homebrew or anything like that, like some people did?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh no.
Mr. Kolb: People could do that legally, I guess. Well then, other than your family, what did you do for recreation? Do you remember off-hand?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Whatever we did at church, our church. When we first came, we didn’t have a Lutheran church in Oak Ridge, and we went to Knoxville.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, every Sunday, you went to Knoxville, for a while?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes. And when we got a church out at East Village, why, we went out there until we built our church here in town.
Mr. Kolb: Where did you first meet? What kind of building was it that you first met in?
Mrs. Alspaugh: It’s still there.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, was it the East Village Chapel?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that’s right.
Mr. Kolb: East Village Chapel, so-called?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, East Village Chapel.
Mr. Kolb: And it’s still there. It’s now a Baptist church isn’t it?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t know.
Mr. Kolb: Okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Several churches, I think, met there at different times.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, right, you had to take turns.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, but we had Sunday morning.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, and then you went to school and church both or just church? Did you have time for Sunday school? Do you remember?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Seems like we had Sunday school too. I remember Pastor Grum teaching Bible class.
Mr. Kolb: And your Pastor Grum, did he come here as the –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, our first pastor was Pastor Seek.
Mr. Kolb: Seek, that’s right, an older man?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Older man.
Mr. Kolb: Was he already retired or something like that?
Mrs. Alspaugh: He was ill, and he had to stay in a dormitory, and he had a hard time getting food and everything, and I’d have him up here for his breakfast and sort of took him under –
Mr. Kolb: But he stayed in the dorm.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Was his wife not with him?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, at first she wasn’t, but then later they did move out in East Village.
Mr. Kolb: But this was like a mission church, kind of, initially.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Pastor Groridge came out to help.
Mr. Kolb: Pastor who?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Groridge.
Mr. Kolb: Groridge?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Groridge. G-R-O-R-I, but he was at Highland View. I mean, he had services at Highland View. There was two of them.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, the school? In the school?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, church.
Mr. Kolb: Highland View Church.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, it was a school. It’s where the Museum is now. I mean, the Children’s Museum.
Mr. Kolb: I didn’t know that. You met at Highland View for a while.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, and he stayed with us for six months, with four children.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, stayed with you? He stayed with you here? With your family?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: So you had your four children and his four children?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, he didn’t have any children. He didn’t even have a wife. I mean, he’d had one, but he came here alone.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, he lived with you, with your family.
Mrs. Alspaugh: For six months.
Mr. Kolb: I see, ’cause he probably couldn’t get housing at that time.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, I don’t remember. No, they never moved here. He had a son in the Army then that was killed, so that happened all while he was here. It was sad.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, my. And Grum came after him?
Mrs. Alspaugh: After Seek. See Seek and Groridge were here.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, and then Grum?
Mrs. Alspaugh: And then Grum.
Mr. Kolb: And then he stayed for several years.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Yes, okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I still write to her.
Mr. Kolb: He went to California, didn’t he?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes. He went from here to California. Then he went to Hawaii.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, but his wife’s in California now?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: So, as far as recreation, you didn’t go bowling?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, no. I didn’t have time to bowl.
Mr. Kolb: Or dances on the tennis courts?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, now, we belong to the ’43.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: The square dance group.
Mr. Kolb: Where do you square-dance?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Over at Pine Valley.
Mr. Kolb: In the school?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: You ever square-dance outside in the summertime? Just in the school, inside?
Mrs. Alspaugh: In their gym.
Mr. Kolb: Remember who your caller might have been?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, we had a good one. I can’t think of his name.
Mr. Kolb: Well that’s okay. Just thought I’d ask. We had a caller named, oh I can’t think of his name too, Tyler, Taylor, over in Knoxville when we first started square dancing back in the sixties. So your church, Faith Lutheran Church was pretty much your social outlet.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, we had a pinochle club in the church, and we played –
Mr. Kolb: Oh, okay, I didn’t know that, pinochle club.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And then we played bridge. We had a little bridge group in the church. And everything was church that we did, well, we did with the church.
Mr. Kolb: Right, they had a lot of young mothers just like yourself.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, everybody was about the same age.
Mr. Kolb: I guess that you met the Bigelows when they came in ’49, Merless and Bob Bigelow.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We were the first people that they met. They came on Saturday and we met them on Sunday at church out at East Village.
Mr. Kolb: Okay. You were still in East Village then, in ’49?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh yeah.
Mr. Kolb: The Kinebergers were here, I guess, and the Schimmels, Bill and Louise Schimmel.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, not both of them, but Bill got married here.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, but he was here early.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah. Arnie Johnson.
Mr. Kolb: Arnie Johnson, I know, was early.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And Ellen.
Mr. Kolb: The years went by so fast, you hardly remember. It’s just a blur.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And the Holmes were here pretty early.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, yeah, Dick and his wife, both. Were they married when they came here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Did you have much contact with Baptists or Methodists or Presbyterians? There were all kinds of people here, from all over the country.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I know and I had a good neighbor down here that was a Church of Christ, and –
Mr. Kolb: All different branches, and –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Different places.
Mr. Kolb: All these churches were just like Faith Lutheran. They were all growing up, starting and putting down their roots.
Mrs. Alspaugh: But, you know, with taking care of the family and doing what I did in the church, there wasn’t time for – and then the Bromleys lived across the street, and they didn’t socialize much.
Mr. Kolb: Just knew them casually.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, and Coneybears lived next to them [119 Meadow Road].
Mr. Kolb: Coney Bear?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Coneybear. And their daughter is still Judy’s best friend. In fact they’re in Atlanta now, and she comes, they come up and visit Judy and me.
Mr. Kolb: Oh. How is that spelled, Bear?
Mrs. Alspaugh: C-O-N-E-Y-B-E-A-R.
Mr. Kolb: B-E-A-R, that’s what I thought.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Coneybear.
Mr. Kolb: You know, Oak Ridge was, and still is, kind of different or unique in that respect. We have so many different kinds [of people], even [people that come from countries] everywhere, and it’s different. It’s not like your typical Tennessee town in that respect.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, no. There are people here from all over.
Mr. Kolb: But coming from North Carolina, it was not a huge change. I mean, it was a lot of similarities.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes. And we lived in a small town.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, Taylorsville is kind of small.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Now, I was raised in Gastonia, which was close to Charlotte, and that wasn’t so small, but –
Mr. Kolb: But Al came from Taylorsville?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: That’s a smaller town, too. Isn’t that where they make furniture a lot?
Mrs. Alspaugh: And hickories. North Carolina’s big in furniture.
[break in recording]
Mrs. Alspaugh: Was their daughter Colleen Black?
Mr. Kolb: Yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Seems like that. I knew Colleen.
Mr. Kolb: Colleen Black told me once that she belonged to a sewing club. They met one evening, and the next morning, a man came and questioned one of her neighbors and asked her neighbor, this woman, what they talked about in their sewing [club] when they met. He saw these cars or people going to this house, and he was checking up on what they were talking about. He was a security person. Did you ever hear about that kind of thing going on?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: But it did.
Mrs. Alspaugh: It did.
Mr. Kolb: So there were ears planted here and there, even though you weren’t aware of it. But it was there, you know. Well, did you participate in the war effort through having a victory garden or buying war bonds and that sort of thing?
Mrs. Alspaugh: We probably bought war bonds, but probably not too many because it took what we had to survive. Now, we didn’t have a garden.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, not that at least. [Did you] collect aluminum foil back then? I remember collecting milkweed, which was a substitute for silk. Milkweed is just a wild plant. We collected these seed pods and turned them in, and they passed them on, and they used that in place of silk, ’cause silk came from the Orient. Couldn’t get silk in the wartime, of course; the Japanese had it all. So that was one of the wartime things that –
Mrs. Alspaugh: The only thing that my children did was catch June bugs.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, they caught June bugs. What was that for?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well –
Mr. Kolb: What were they used for?
Mrs. Alspaugh: They did that till not too many years ago.
Mr. Kolb: You mean the ones that fluoresce?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, the ones that light up.
Mr. Kolb: Okay, that was for the Biology Division, I believe, out here at the Plant. I think they used them some way out there.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, they did that for a long time.
Mrs. Alspaugh: A long time.
Mr. Kolb: And they did it back then? Or sometime?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, I don’t know how soon it started.
Mr. Kolb: But you remember they did it. They don’t do that anymore, I don’t think, but it wasn’t too many years ago they were still doing it. Well, did you have any contact with any black people? There weren’t very many, I know, but did you have any contact with any of [them], or [see] them? They weren���t living here. They lived over in Gamble Valley, I guess. It wasn’t here.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t know. I didn’t have contact with them, but they were here.
Mr. Kolb: You saw them around.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah.
Mr. Kolb: But you didn’t have much contact, because they were pretty much relegated over to Scarboro area.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: As I understand, their jobs were kind of the menial jobs, the housekeeping or janitorial, or that kind of thing.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And how long have we had our janitor?
Mr. Kolb: Just over 50 years. We celebrated [our] fiftieth anniversary – was it last year?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, seems like.
Mr. Kolb: So that would make him – he came here in the fifties – back when I came in ’54, he was a janitor. So it was before ’54. Theo. Can’t think of his last name.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I never knew anything but Theo.
Mr. Kolb: Theo. I can’t recall his last name either, and times change real rapidly. Kids grew up, the town got opened up, and then when did you buy this house from whoever sold it, MSI or whoever?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Seems like it was in the fifties.
Mr. Kolb: Late fifties.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Late fifties that we bought it, but the date, I don’t remember.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, ’57 or ’58, I think. Something like that, when they started selling the property. You bought it without thinking about it. You didn’t want to move.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, no.
Mr. Kolb: This was a nice location.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah, it was a good location.
Mr. Kolb: Quiet street, not a lot of traffic.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, and then we just had Townsite down here, and even when they built across the street, or down across the Turnpike, why, that was later.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, you mean where the shopping mall is now.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, that’s later.
Mrs. Alspaugh: You know, when we lived here, there was nothing across the Turnpike.
Mr. Kolb: Really?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No buildings at all.
Mr. Kolb: Wasn’t there a recreation hall there of some kind, I thought?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Not that I know of.
Mr. Kolb: You mean initially.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Initially.
Mr. Kolb: But did it have one later, during the war? ’Cause I know there was a rec hall there. That’s what I was told. I’ve seen a map. And I think there was a couple stores later.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: You remember all the temporary housing that was around, the hutments?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, they were here, but I didn’t come in contact with them much.
Mr. Kolb: Weren’t in this neighborhood, I guess.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No. We had the flattops. We had flattops down this street here.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, you did?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes.
Mr. Kolb: And they were moved after the war?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: And then houses built in their place?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: And the houses they built were cemestos, just like this one?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, I don’t think those are cemesto houses. I think people bought the lots and –
Mr. Kolb: Oh, after the town was opened up.
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, flattops were here until –
Mr. Kolb: Where they could be picked up easily and moved out.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Moved out. You’d see them scattered all over the state. People would buy them and live in them.
Mr. Kolb: Of course we still have some, up on West Outer near Illinois. There are still a lot of flattops, but they’ve got roofs on them now. But they’re still flattops.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, and some of them don’t have any [roofs].
Mr. Kolb: Is that right? There’s still some?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, I’ve seen some.
[break in recording]
Mr. Kolb: Louise, do you remember the day when the first bomb was dropped on Japan, and you heard about it, where you were and what people did [once] the big news was out [that] Oak Ridge was part of the atom bomb project? Remember what you were doing about then? That would have been about August 6th or August 7th, ’45. I believe that was the date. The secret was out.
Mrs. Alspaugh: You know, Jim, I don’t. I know we were at home here.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We had radios, but we didn’t have any TVs then.
Mr. Kolb: Thought I heard that Y-12 workers were sent home early and had a big party down in Jackson Square.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I don’t remember that.
Mr. Kolb: But did you have any discussion with your parents when they found out what was going on?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, if we did, I don’t remember.
Mr. Kolb: That was a different day, the day the secret was out. Then the secrecy was over and Al could talk about what he did.
Mrs. Alspaugh: But he never did. He never did.
Mr. Kolb: So he must have been working on the calutrons that enriched the uranium. That’s where the bomb material came for the Hiroshima bomb, from Y-12, not from K-25. [Do you remember] the day that the city gates were open and the big parade was held and all the dignitaries were here? Did you go down and see the parade?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, I remember that.
Mr. Kolb: Where did you see the parade from? What part of town were you in?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I think down there.
Mr. Kolb: And every state had a delegation. They had every state represented, there was people here from every state –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, everywhere.
Mr. Kolb: Plus some of the foreign countries, too. So North Carolina would have been represented, your state. Are there any other unique incidents you might remember, strange things that happened that jump out in your mind about things that went on here, or happened to your children?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Of course, by then we were active in school.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, which was Pine Valley.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Cedar Hill.
Mr. Kolb: Cedar Hill.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Cedar Hill, and then Jefferson, and then when they built the new high school.
Mr. Kolb: What year would that have been, about? ’50s? Born in –
Mrs. Alspaugh: He was born in ’35.
Mr. Kolb: ’35, okay, so he would have been in high school in the early ’50s then.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: So was he under Jack Armstrong? Coach Armstrong?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: They had some good teams back then.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Was that when Jackie Pope was a running back?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, they had one of their best teams back then.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And he got a scholarship to UT.
Mr. Kolb: I didn’t know that he had a scholarship. I’m not sure exactly when he went.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And then the children were doing it. And then they went to college.
Mr. Kolb: Right. Did Mary Ann go to college?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Mary Ann got married.
Mr. Kolb: She got married right out of high school? Yeah, she and David went to college.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And Ralph, yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Ralph, yeah, and then you’re back here now again. So you got a family history right in these four walls.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Four walls.
Mr. Kolb: More than four walls, ’cause there’s eight walls. There’s four up there and four down here in your apartment. You’ve got a beautiful backyard here too.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yes. Al dug this yard out when the children were small and leveled it off so they���d have a place to play.
Mr. Kolb: [You] say, ‘dug it out.’ Was it more of a hill or something?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah. It was just a hill.
Mr. Kolb: Had to move a lot of dirt out?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: And he’d just push it all down there. And they had a basketball court out there, and they used to have dances out there, the high school kids.
Mr. Kolb: In the backyard here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, my goodness, wow.
Mrs. Alspaugh: They had a good time.
Mr. Kolb: Well, there’s something else I forgot to ask you about. I know Al was active in the Flintstones music group at church, right?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I was too.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, you were too? What did you play?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I sang.
Mr. Kolb: You sang. And who else, let’s see, there was Ed Brock, right?
Mrs. Alspaugh: I’ve got a picture of that.
[break in recording]
Mr. Kolb: When did this music group called Flintstones start, about? Was it when your kids were still young or a little bit later?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, they were probably in high school and – I should have had that marked.
Mr. Kolb: Let’s see, was that after the Straches moved here?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes. Well, it was during that time, because Strache was in it.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, Ed Brock.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Ed Brock, oh here is one, but let’s see.
Mr. Kolb: And then Paul Kasten. Here you are.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, but I’ve got some –
Mr. Kolb: Here’s another one.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Well you had fancy outfits on, too.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, yes, we made those.
Mr. Kolb: There’s Ed Brock, yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We were real close to Ed and Lois, and they just lived up here on Kentucky.
Mr. Kolb: Is that right? I had forgotten about that.
Mrs. Alspaugh: There’s C. Straches, and Chuck Schmitt.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, Chuck Schmitt.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Chuck Schmitt.
Mr. Kolb: And Paul Kasten, was he the – played the piano?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah, and Bernice, and Muellers, Ken Muellers. I guess that was about the bunch.
Mr. Kolb: Okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I’ve got, I thought I had a good picture.
Mr. Kolb: You just played at church outings or did you go to other, any other places or –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Listen, we played for different organizations. We played for a teacher’s convention in Gatlinburg, to five hundred –
Mr. Kolb: My goodness.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah, we were big time.
Mr. Kolb: Were you making big money back then?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Oh, yeah.
Mr. Kolb: You probably got a free meal every once in a while, right?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, we did. We had a lot of fun with that.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, and you sang. Who else sang? Did Lois Brock sing?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yes, all the women.
Mr. Kolb: Bernice?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Bernice, and Adelaide Strache.
Mr. Kolb: Adelaide Strache, and did Toni Schmitt sing?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Let��s see. You had a pretty good size bunch.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: Was that Paul right there? He’s kind of small. That’s Ed playing the base, Ed Brock, I remember that.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, this is –
Mr. Kolb: I��m not sure who –
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well there’s Paul.
Mr. Kolb: He has glasses on, so it looks like Paul to me.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that’s Paul.
Mr. Kolb: Is that Ted Mueller?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No, this is Al.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, that’s Al playing the banjo. That’s right, he had a banjo.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Now, we’ve got a better picture. Oh, here it is.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, Lord, yeah, here we go. Oh, here’s our church.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, and this is Ted Mueller.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, there’s Al.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Al.
Mr. Kolb: Was that Arnie?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Arnie.
Mr. Kolb: And Ed.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Ed Brock, somewhere.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, okay.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Here he is.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, sitting down, yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Lois and I used to do the Charleston.
Mr. Kolb: Oh, Lord, do the Charleston.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I know it, that’s what, oh, Lord.
Mr. Kolb: I didn’t know you had that reputation.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Well, it’s not – we don’t travel that around.
Mr. Kolb: You don’t want to have that news get out?
Mrs. Alspaugh: No.
Mr. Kolb: That you were a dancing girl? Very good. I remember the Flintstones. In fact, Paul Kasten had all that paraphernalia, and I helped him, he wanted to get rid of it a couple years ago, and I didn’t want to take it down to a flea market. Some of it we did, but I think your son David got some of that, just to keep some of it in the family, because he didn’t want to lose all of it. But that was kind of unique. There were probably other groups similar to that around town. It just a catchall kind of informal musicians of sorts.
Mrs. Alspaugh: But we had a good time.
Mr. Kolb: Well, between that and your pinochle and your card games and square dancing, you had enough to keep you busy.
Mrs. Alspaugh: We did. We didn’t really need anything else, because we didn’t have time for anything else.
Mr. Kolb: That’s right. It was a busy time, and –
Mrs. Alspaugh: And I made some good friends. Down on Malvern, I had two good friends down there. They’re both gone by now. We’re getting to that age, you know.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, that’s right, they’re going right and left unfortunately. Well, anything else you want to say, that’s fine. Otherwise, we’re just about done. It’s up to you Louise. You have done a good job reminiscing. Now you are a unique survivor of the Secret City of Oak Ridge. When they started the town, they didn’t plan on it being a town forever, you know. They thought it might blow away for all anyone knew.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I know it. I have friends who said, “Oh well, it’s not going to last much longer.” I said, “Don’t kid yourself.”
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, they put all this money in here, it’s not gonna just be wasted. And that’s true, that’s the way it worked out, all those facilities out there. They only designed these houses for ten years, and here we are sixty years later.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: They’re as good as new. Well, not as good as new, but –
Mrs. Alspaugh: They were good, good houses.
Mr. Kolb: I’ve been told by people that got cemestos that the hardwood floors are better than you can get today.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah, that’s right.
Mr. Kolb: And I don’t doubt it, yeah.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mr. Kolb: And the wood came right from these hills. They cut all the oak trees down.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Judy’s got one bedroom that’s refinished, upstairs, and they’re beautiful.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, sure. And they’re beautiful homes.
Mrs. Alspaugh: I’m real comfortable here. It’s just enough for me to take care of.
Mr. Kolb: Yeah, that’s right, you don’t need a lot.
Mrs. Alspaugh: Uhn-uhn.
Mr. Kolb: Well I’m gonna just turn this off here and thank you for your kind remarks, okay?
Mrs. Alspaugh: Good
Mr. Kolb: Very good.
[break in recording]
Mr. Kolb: Well, Louise, you just told us about how the article in the Oak Ridger on September the 13th of 2001 highlighted your home here, and the history of your home, that your daughter Judy now owns, and shows a picture of the WWII home that you started in, and it’s all well described in that article, September 13th.
[end of recording]